ABOVE WATER

In three chapters from three different parts of our earth, Udo Maurer’s documentary Above Water reports on the existential significance of the element of water for humanity. In this way, a seemingly banal and obvious fact becomes an exciting and immediate narrative about the daily struggle for survival. In spite of water. Because of water. Without water. With water. About flooding and inundation in the delta region of the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh, about the once-thriving fishing port and harbor city of Aralsk on the Aral Sea that now lies lost in the dry Kazakh steppes, and about Africa’s daily war of all against all for a couple of canisters of clean water in Kibera, the largest slum of Nairobi.